The Ministry of Health reports that New Zealand has two new cases of COVID-19 - one imported and one in the community.
The imported case is a man in his forties who recently returned from Russia on a flight via Turkey and Malaysia on September 19. He returned a positive test result on day 3 of his stay and is now at the quarantine facility.
The community case is a female in her late teens who was already self-isolating. This person is a household contact, epidemiologically linked to the Auckland August cluster bereavement sub-group.
"There are 35 people isolating in the Auckland quarantine facility from the community, which includes 15 people who have tested positive for COVID-19 and their household contacts," the ministry says.
Three people remain in hospital on a ward. There is one each in Auckland City, North Shore and Middlemore hospitals.
"Since August 11, our contact tracing team has identified 4,053 close contacts of cases, of which 4,050 have been contacted and are self-isolating or have completed self-isolation. We are in the process of contacting the rest."
New Zealand now has 60 active cases, of which 29 are imported and 31 are community cases. We have now recorded 1473 confirmed cases.
On Thursday, labs processed 6465 tests, taking the country's overall total to 937,244.
"There are now 2,272,500 users registered on NZ COVID Tracer. The app has recorded a total of 73,856,565 poster scans, and users have created 3,278,040 manual diary entries in NZ COVID Tracer."
Update on Wednesday's three community cases
The Ministry of Health says work remains underway to trace, contact and test close contacts of the three community cases reported on Wednesday. These are the cases linked to the Christchurch-Auckland charter flight that a positve recent returnee flew on.
"As we have previously reported, these three people are part of the same family group – two had been in managed isolation in Christchurch and returned home on a chartered flight, while the third is a household contact," the ministry said.
"There are now a total of 35 close contacts associated with these cases. Eight have returned negative test results and the remaining have been or are in the process of being tested. All are now self-isolating."
On Thursday, the ministry revealed several locations in the central North Island visited by the family while on a trip there before testing positive.
"Public health services in the relevant regions have been in contact with businesses where individuals may have visited while infectious and will be issuing information to the public as appropriate.
"The National Contact Tracing team will continue issuing exposure notices through the COVID Tracer App where appropriate."
It says that on Thursday 15 push notifications were issued via the application.
"This is significantly assisting contact tracing efforts. Anyone receiving an app notification as having visited a place of interest should be vigilant of their health and get tested if they develop symptoms."
In response, three new community testing centres have been stood up. One is located in Taupo and there are two in Rotorua. There are numerous other testing stations in other regions, the ministry says.
Of the 86 people on the chartered flight, 75 have returned negative tests, six were previously reported positive cases that require no further testing, three are the recently reported positive cases, one is pending and one is under investigation.
